Animal Crossing: New Horizons will not have cloud saves

In a recent interview with Gamekult, Animal Crossing: New Horizons game director Aya Kyogoku and producer Higashi Nogami talked about features coming to the game that weren’t mentioned in the Tree House presentation.

On top of talking about Amiibo compatibility, different settings, and fan favorite musician K.K. Slider, they also gave fans an answer about if the game will be compatible with the cloud save feature on Nintendo’s Switch online.

According to Nogami, the game would have been compatible with the cloud save function if not for the potential issues that online backups could cause for the time-based events in the game. Nintendo is worried that some players would manipulate time in the game by abusing the cloud backups.

This has been the case with several first-party Nintendo games since cloud saves became a feature of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription. But unlike with the other titles that are missing the option like Splatoon 2 and Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu, the Animal Crossing devs are just trying to preserve the key gameplay mechanic of their series – time.

Players want to spend time in that world, creating, making friends, and just developing their island into something genuinely unique to them. If cloud saves somehow hamper that experience, Nintendo should avoid enabling them until that issue is fixed.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons will launch for Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2020.